Local voters weigh in on their presidential picks

Sunday

Oct 12, 2008 at 8:00 AMOct 12, 2008 at 9:31 AM

Robert ZulloSenior Staff Writer

HOUMA — Reached by telephone and approached randomly on the streets last week, Terrebonne and Lafourche voters offered a variety of reasons when asked about their choices in next month’s presidential election.

Young and old, black and white, they cited hot-button issues like abortion, the economy and the war in Iraq as major factors in their decisions.

However, nearly two dozen interviews on whether voters plan to throw their support to Democrat Barack Obama or Republican John McCain also revealed a mix of strict ideologies, gut reaction to half-truths and sometimes outright lies, racial preferences and prejudice, sketchy fears and vague optimism.

Few of those interviewed mentioned specific policies, platforms or voting histories as the basis for their choices, and some cited reasoning based on rumor and innuendo.

Political theorists say that’s not unusual and that political campaign strategists in fact count on it.

Terry Dupre, of Houma, a 64-year-old retired oilfield worker, is still undecided about how his presidential vote will be cast.

But he has serious reservations about Obama, citing what he says is the candidate’s relative inexperience and quick rise to national prominence.

In particular, he expressed concern about a rumor spread by e-mails as his main beef with the junior senator from Illinois.

“What burns me up about him is he won’t even say the Pledge of Allegiance,” Dupre said. The claim has been debunked by independent, non-partisan groups like the Annenberg Political Fact Check.

Many voters interviewed expressed a preference for Sen. John McCain, but the Republican nominee also had his detractors, several of whom cited his age and what they said were uncomfortably close ties to the widely unpopular presidency of George Bush.

“He’s 72, he’s got eight more years,” said Lena Hunter, a 70-year-old retired Terrebonne School Board employee. “If, God forbid, Alzheimer’s sets in, he’s not going to know his head from his toes.”

Few voters said they’d checked voting records for McCain or Obama, even though both are U.S. senators whose past decisions on policy are widely available on the Internet.

Most said the only voting histories they were aware of were disseminated through campaign ads or television new coverage.

A 20-year-old Houma receptionist said she plans to vote for McCain “because of what he stands for and what he will do for our country,” adding that she wants “somebody who’s looking out for everyone, not just the high classes.”

Asked what McCain might do for the country, she said, “I don’t know.”

Voters were equally vague about the state of government closer to home. Many of those interviewed for this story could name their local office holders, but few got all of them.

And though they expressed concern over the major national issues, only a handful could articulate a policy position on either candidate.

Political scientists say that’s a phenomenon not unique to locals.

“One thing we know is voters are relatively unsophisticated,” said Joshua Stockley, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Louisiana-Monroe.

Voters rely on “cues,” or shortcuts, Stockley said.

Those cues — party affiliation, religion, gender and race, among others — whittle down the voting public, lining them up behind one candidate or the other until a crucial pool of undecided or unaccounted for voters is left.

“A candidate cannot break down why our health care system is failing,” Stockley said by way of example. “Because of our ignorance, candidates never give us specific proposals. They give us punch-lines. … It causes candidates to simplify how they appeal to us. It causes candidates to appeal to our fears.”

This means candidates intentionally lower the level of discourse in political races to appeal to voters.

“I would say that campaigns are geared more toward the ignorant than the educated,” he said. “Chances are the educated have already made their voting decision.”

Without in-depth discussions of issues or policy, candidates wage war for voters on other levels.

“The candidates have to find some other way to draw you in,” he said. “Candidates have a variety of techniques to do that. That’s where we see negative advertising come into play.”

For example, Stockley said Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s repeated attempts to distort Obama’s relationship with 1960s radical William Ayers is an attempt to appeal to voters’ fears.

Ayers, member of the Weather Underground group who admitted bombings in protest of the Vietnam War, served on a community board with Obama decades later and was introduced to him as a member of Chicago’s liberal political establishment. Obama has consistently downplayed his association with Ayers.

“I think she very intentionally used the term ‘Obama associates with domestic terrorist,’ ” Stockley said. “There’s a great example of ignorance there.”

The combination of Obama’s name — including “Hussein,” his middle name — and the Internet rumors that he is really a Muslim, despite repeated assertions from Obama and his opponents that the rumor is not true, add to the perception.

For its part, the Obama campaign has made much of McCain’s role in the 1980s savings and loan scandal, noting that McCain was one of the “Keating Five.” Five senators were defendants in a congressional ethics investigation into their political connections to Charles Keating Jr., a banker who was convicted of swindling investors.

Though he admitted attempting to intercede with financial regulators on behalf of the banker, who had provided thousands of dollars in contributions to McCain, the Arizona senator was cleared of wrongdoing in the scandal.

The bottom line is campaign managers bank on voters drawing negative associations on a bare minimum of information, Stockley said.

SOUND BYTES AND SLURSJames Bovard, a former journalist and Libertarian-minded author of “Attention Deficit Democracy” and other books on the state of American government and the U.S. electorate, said the 2008 campaign has been “a great year for cynics.”

Bovard said “sound bytes and slurs” exert too much influence on the electorate. “Folks have been satisfied with phrases instead of making the effort to understand the policy,” he added.

Part of the problem, Bovard said, is government has become much bigger, policies have become more complex and, at the same time, the average citizen has made little or any effort to keep up.

“This basically puts politicians on the honor system,” Bovard said, adding that distortions and falsehoods spread by campaigns are aided by news media that can be “cowardly” or just as ignorant as the voters they seek to inform. “It’s easier to get away with lies nowadays.”

Also, voters claim loyalties to parties that may not adhere to the same values they once did.

Terrance Rogers, a 65-year-old retired drilling supervisor from Houma, says he has been a Republican his entire life, based on a stated philosophy of conservative tax policy and individual responsibility.

“The Democrat party is just a tax-and-spend party and I don’t go for that,” Rogers said. “ (A) Republican is more based on people doing for themselves, so to speak. I can take care of myself I don’t need the government to get involved with everything.”

But in the last eight years, much of which was dominated by the Republican party control of the executive and legislative branches, the GOP has “expanded government in so many ways,” Bovard said, pointing to farm subsidies and Republican complicity in the $700 billion Wall Street bailout.

“People have gotten vested in politicians and certain political parties and they are blind to the faults and blind to the lies,” Bovard said.

Voters and media also fail to fully investigate campaign issues, such as Barack Obama’s support for increasing ethanol production.

“This is a good example of an ultimate bogus issue,” he said. “It’s a very poor source of fuel, but it’s good for the farm lobby.”

Bovard also said he was mystified by the popular excitement generated by Obama and Palin in their respective parties.

“Something I find almost comical is that some of the Obama supporters seem to think the only thing that’s necessary in order to have a government that serves people is a new set of politicians in charge. Both parties are complicit in many of the abuses of the last eight years,” Bovard said.

Given her lack of experience, he was also amused by that “people have read so many positive qualities” into Palin, who was the mayor of small Alaskan town just two years ago.

“All of a sudden she’s a new Joan of Arc,” he said.

“First and foremost she’s a politician,” Bovard said, adding that to some extent the same phenomenon extends to Obama. “Folks somehow think these two people have somehow transcended the follies that are the bad traits of their class. … It’s almost as if people are desperate for a savior. I think that explains some of the reaction to Palin and also Obama.”